Corona Help thread

[clutchee]

Wife’s first day working from home was yesterday..... wow! I swear on Conf call she was yelling, I walked in and handed her set of ear buds with mic and said use them.....
“Oh was I being to loud...... “

I said the conf call I was on thought you were yelling at them......

She was quiet the rest of day.

 

[The Luke]

@clutchee you probably did everyone a favor. Lol

You seen the video floating around of the video conference call that looks like the Brady bunch and some lady set her phone down and you can see her in the corner sitting down on the toilet in front of all her corworkers? Haha I about lost it

 

[TBItoy]

Also working from home. Wife is now working from home, kinda. She’s an occupational therapist for metro schools. They’ve told her to prepare to work from home and that she’s required to. But have not told her how or what she’s doing. Her kids are mostly lower income and have zero technology access.

We also have both kids at home with us full time.

So we’re juggling who watches the kids, who’s working, etc...

yep.

I'm still at normal old work, as we only have 10 employees that show up on a normal day... and we don't necessarily work close to each other anyway.

My wife is a elementary school teacher at the poor school in Putnam county. I'm going to have to start staying home to watch our kid so she can work from home.

My wife thinks there are maybe 1 or 2 kids in her class that are capable and able to access online learning resources.

At her school, the administration has to call the police department any time a kid needs to be send home (sickness, fever, etc) because the parents do not have working phones, refuse to answer, or are too ****ing cracked out to answer or pick up their kid.

It's weekly that kids are left at school after hours because the **** parents won't even come pick them up, but they are expected to "remote learn online". It's bunch of horse**** for **** people if you ask me.

 

[The Luke]

Metro is bucking the entire online learning since not everyone is able to.

They also announced they will be participating in the governors school shut down til April 26th or whatever it was.

 

[xjmarc]

In Hamilton county, Chattanooga area, they gave out laptops to all the kids. Some were sent home with them and others picked them up later. They have free access for those who don't have internet. A teacher friend of ours is doing video conferencing daily with her high school kids. My wife's restaurant is doing take out meals and meals for first responders, people are paying for a meal for a cop, firefighter, ems etc. So far she's had people prepay for over 200 of them. My company decided we're "essential" since we do life safety and work in hospitals and nursing homes so I'm still going in every day for now. I don't exactly have a job I can do from home.

 

[tkinze]

The other part of my small business is b2b VoIP telecom. Most of my larger customers are under support agreements which under normal conditions isn't too labor intensive.

That has all changed in the last 2+ weeks as we have been inundated as customers migrate employees to home offices. Fortunately, we put hour caps on the vast majority of these contracts before we start billing overages, that's gonna help save my ass in the long run.

Amongst the trends we are seeing is that many companies are being penny wise and pound foolish. As they migrate admin personnel out of the offices they dont want to invest a minor amount of money (<$100 per) to enable remote office capabilities and instead end up undermining their own capabilities.

I understand cutting costs but employees on the payroll that can't contribute is a far bigger loss.

 

[TMac]

So we’re juggling who watches the kids, who’s working, etc...

same boat here. We only have 1 but shes a toddler. with an ear infection.

 

[The Luke]

@TMac ouch. That sucks. Good luck man

 

[money_pit_yj]

Finally brought my monitor home. Desk was to small and monitor to big so I added the table. Then monitor was to small so I moved it to the table which was in my shed so it smells like Orthene and burnt oil with a nice musty finisher. Improvise, adapt, overcome......

 

[The Luke]

@race_jeep how about some mail order beer? Is that a thing?

 

[race_jeep]

@race_jeep how about some mail order beer? Is that a thing?

Not yet, we are trying to get them to legalize beer delivery, but it’s not looking promising . There was supposed to be something in the next legislative session about legalizing mail order beer and wine, but they don’t expect it to be addressed next session now.

 

[jrhall]

Working on the ambulance in Huntsville.

Er is slow here. Call volume is way down. Been that way for 4 weeks. We like very other county have a few positive patients but I personally havent been impressed by the numbers.

 

[ridered3]

@race_jeep how about some mail order beer? Is that a thing?

The local Toots and a few breweries around here are offering Beer to go, but that's the closest I've seen at this point.

 

[kevinhumphrey]

@race_jeep how about some mail order beer? Is that a thing?

Can get crown royal delivered wife already got a few bottles sent to the house. Not sure where she’s getting it from but it is peach crown and supposedly hard to find

 

[MoparMan]

Can get crown royal delivered wife already got a few bottles sent to the house. Not sure where she’s getting it from but it is peach crown and supposedly hard to find

I need to know where to get it for my wife. If you could, find out and let me know please.

 

[The Luke]

@ridered3 mannnn we don’t have crap in Wilson county.

 

[ridered3]

@ridered3 mannnn we don’t have crap in Wilson county.

That's quite unfortunate. Last I saw, Toots sold it by the gallon too.

 

[tkinze]

I am also a business owner providing business telecom systems (phone systems/VoIP stuff) and Low Voltage cabling for businesses. A huge part of my business is closely tied to the construction industry and the majority of my income is project oriented.

Friday we started getting hammered with telecommuting service requests and expect that will continue this week but I can't make a living simply fulfilling support contracts.

Things have been cruising along for awhile now but I am hugely concerned about what this is going to do to corporate relocations & moves. We have projects in the pipeline but worried those may start to pull back as companies go into a "wait and see" mode.

Just sharing what others are seeing can help relieve the stress while we hope for a (relatively) quick end to this mess.

Was thinking about this thread the other day. We're now year and half later so I went back reread my own post just to see how relevant it was. Long story short my concerns back in March of 2020 were not unwarranted.

Curious to hear how you guys have made out after all the bull**** we've seen and been through.

 

[TBItoy]

Customers put a bunch of orders on hold last year, now they are trying to buy ALL the machines and automation equipment, so we’ve got more orders in process than we’ve done in 3 years.
Now lead times on purchased components are super long if the parts are even available, raw material prices are doubled. We can’t guarantee delivery dates or project schedules. And I need to hire a machine builder(industrial mechanic)/fabricator, but it seems that everyone that wants to work already has a job they don’t want to leave.

good times

it’ll take years for all this to get straightened out

 

[Beerj]

Nothing slowed down much on the railroad, at least not my end (construction/maintenance). Actually, with the reduced train schedule, we've been tackling some bigger projects that require longer track outages. The wife is a conductor so it's been fun having her schedule change all the time because they kept getting rid of trains but things are steadily picking back up.

 

[Beerj]

Customers put a bunch of orders on hold last year, now they are trying to buy ALL the machines and automation equipment, so we’ve got more orders in process than we’ve done in 3 years.
Now lead times on purchased components are super long if the parts are even available, raw material prices are doubled. We can’t guarantee delivery dates or project schedules. And I need to hire a machine builder(industrial mechanic)/fabricator, but it seems that everyone that wants to work already has a job they don’t want to leave.

good times

it’ll take years for all this to get straightened out

Haven't you been looking for someone to fill that job forever now?

 

[Zjman]

My work was slammed the last year. This will be best year I have ever had. I had the Rona back in April. It kicked my ass. The side effects were no joke. I still think I suffer from some brain fog.

 

[TBItoy]

Haven't you been looking for someone to fill that job forever now?

Yes, sort of, with reason.
Our main guy (Bob) that does the bulk of basic machine assembly, plumbing, wire routing, and guarding (lexan work more akin to woodwork), and lathe work is just turned 65 years old and was planning on retiring this summer.
The end of 2019, Bob and I were discussing that he was wanting to phase into retirement, go to part time, etc, so I started looking for a new guy... Enter early 2020 and 3 customers put their projects on hold, everything that I'd quoted the customers were holding off on, etc etc. So we didn't have much to do during 2020, and I can't hire a machine builder when there are no machines to build, and everyone that's not working is drawing big unemployment checks.

Now we're busy again and I still need someone.

Part of the problem with being a small company, not having multiple employees to fill roles/distribute work when the need arises.

 

[Beerj]

Yes, sort of, with reason.
Our main guy (Bob) that does the bulk of basic machine assembly, plumbing, wire routing, and guarding (lexan work more akin to woodwork), and lathe work is just turned 65 years old and was planning on retiring this summer.
The end of 2019, Bob and I were discussing that he was wanting to phase into retirement, go to part time, etc, so I started looking for a new guy... Enter early 2020 and 3 customers put their projects on hold, everything that I'd quoted the customers were holding off on, etc etc. So we didn't have much to do during 2020, and I can't hire a machine builder when there are no machines to build, and everyone that's not working is drawing big unemployment checks.

Now we're busy again and I still need someone.

Part of the problem with being a small company, not having multiple employees to fill roles/distribute work when the need arises.

That makes sense. I would imagine things might get easier (employee wise) once the extra benefits run out. Damn near everywhere is hiring but unemployment rates are still high. I bet there's quite a few skilled workers sitting at home right now, figuring there will be a spot for them when the time comes, not realizing that jobs will start to get filled by inexperienced guys willing to train in the meantime.

 

[TBItoy]

That makes sense. I would imagine things might get easier (employee wise) once the extra benefits run out. Damn near everywhere is hiring but unemployment rates are still high. I bet there's quite a few skilled workers sitting at home right now, figuring there will be a spot for them when the time comes, not realizing that jobs will start to get filled by inexperienced guys willing to train in the meantime.

At this point I’m thinking I’ll hire a young person with some basic wrenching and fab skills and pay them over what they’d normally qualify for if they were to go to work for say a welding/fab shop, or a entry level auto mechanic. Not sure.

 

[Waffle]

At this point I’m thinking I’ll hire a young person with some basic wrenching and fab skills and pay them over what they’d normally qualify for if they were to go to work for say a welding/fab shop, or a entry level auto mechanic. Not sure

Funny u mention this because (though I'm not young) that's sorta how I just found employment with a new job in the chemical industry despite having no experience in it. In a ways it's risky, but the optimist in me said "do it". Now I have a position that actually carries a ***le that doesn't cause mass confusion or ridicule.
There's no way they'd hire me 2 years ago, but with the latest employment shuffle they were willing to train and I won the interview.
I start next monday and can't wait to get past 20/21.

 

[Eddyj]

I ended up working last year from 4th of july till Halloween. Kept my family business from shutting down. Plus the people who I borrow money from to buy equipment were lenient. “What are they going to do with used equipment that no one can use?”

this year has been good. However I’m probably at half staff of what I need to run my business effectively. I’m also paying people more than I ever have.

 

[ridered3]

I ended up working last year from 4th of july till Halloween. Kept my family business from shutting down. Plus the people who I borrow money from to buy equipment were lenient. “What are they going to do with used equipment that no one can use?”

this year has been good. However I’m probably at half staff of what I need to run my business effectively. I’m also paying people more than I ever have.

Was wondering how the fair business was going for you this year. Coming to middle Tennessee any the remainder of this year?

 

[Eddyj]

Nope. Changed my route up. So many carnival went out of business last year.

 

[ridered3]

Nope. Changed my route up. So many carnival went out of business last year.

I figured that may have been the case for many in your line of work, but just wanted to see if you'd be semi local.